A Prototype Virtual Collaboration Environment for Sharing Medical Educational Content

The introduction of information and communication technologies in medical curricula has created high expectations for education quality improvements over the last decade. To exploit technological advances in practice, a number of tools and environments have emerged allowing for learning processes and content management, as well as, student and teacher collaboration over the Web. However, to be in a position to fully exploit the benefits of technology in a complex context such as that of medical education, one needs to fuse learning theories and teaching approaches with e-learning environments, which however, enable the Web collaboration of teachers under the use of educational standards. In this paper, a prototype virtual collaboration environment for medical education is illustrated which utilizes an earlier proposed teaching framework based on taxonomies that, however, takes into account educational standards and standardized content specifications. The use of the system is demonstrated through a telecardiology example, while intelligent extensions of the system are discussed.